Bern's Pierfrancesco Basile interviewed...

....at 3AM. He discusses English psychologist and philosopher James Ward! From Professor Basile's interview:

I like forgotten figures in the history of philosophy, they are like smaller, tortuous roads, sometimes leading nowhere, sometimes leading to bizarre, undreamed of places… James Ward is one such figure, both personally and philosophically intriguing. He grew up in a very poor family, went through a religious crisis, studied in Germany, and eventually became a professor in Cambridge. He was also a teacher to Russell and Moore, and Russell always writes of him with great respect and affection. Ward lived at a time when Idealism was the dominant philosophy in Britain. With some simplification, it seems correct to say that the first British idealists looked to Hegel (as well as to other monist metaphysicians like Spinoza and Lotze) as their main source of inspiration. Ward, who disliked Hegelian monism as much as materialism, turned to Leibniz. His metaphysics, which he expounded in a book titled The Realm of Ends, or Pluralism and Theism, is a form of pluralistic metaphysical idealism (or spiritualism), according to which the basic constituents of the world are experiential substances....

[H]e did not slavishly follow Leibniz, but tried to adjust the theory of monads to his own needs. His monads differ from Leibniz’s in that they have windows, that is to say, they are capable of direct causal interaction. We do not live in the best of all possible worlds, but there has been progress in the course of evolution. How is this to be explained? There must be a God working within history, Ward insinuates, leading the monads towards an ideal end, but leaving them free to do their own choices and mistakes. There is a fascinating parallel between this metaphysics and Ward’s own development. Born in a very humble family, he became one of the most respected philosophers of his time (he held the prestigious Gifford Lectures twice). In a way, his life illustrates the basic metaphysical principle that slumbering monads may achieve the highest levels of rationality in the course of time.